Introduction

This lesson was developed by Rob Louwers and Shannon Iverson, students in EDTE 611, Instructional Design: Application of Educational Technology, Malaspina University-College's Post-Baccalaureate teacher education program, in the last month of their professional year. 

In this lesson, Grade 7 students will be gathering information from rich websites in order to analyze whether it would be desirable to 'transport' cultural aspects from Ancient Egypt to a space station set in the year 2525 AD.  It necessarily integrates the concept of social responsibility as students must consider what it is they value about their community . 

Learners

This lesson is anchored in seventh grade Social Studies, Career and Personal Planning (practicing responsible decision making), and to a lesser degree, Language Arts.

Students will need to understand the following concepts prior to beginning this lesson:

• culture
• hierarchy
• cultural aspect of society
• community

Curriculum Standards

BC IRP Grade 7 Social Studies prescribed learning outcomes addressed in this webquest are as follows:

• Demonstrate understanding of the concept of civilization.
• Gather and record a body of information from electronic sources.
• Describe daily life, work, family structures, and gender roles in selected ancient cultures.
• Identify connections between current cultures and ancient cultures.
• Defend a position by considering competing reasons from various perspectives.
• Organize information into a formal presentation. 

BC IRP Grade 7 Language Arts prescribed learning outcomes addressed in this webquest are as follows:

• Demonstrate increased control over their use of grammatical structures and begin to vary grammar to achieve particular effects

• Adjust the degree of formality in their language to suit the form and purpose of their presentations

• Use the conventions of spelling, punctuation, and capitalization in a consistent manner

• Demonstrate their knowledge of the conventions of public speaking and informal oral presentations

• Summarize what they know about specific topics or issues and identify and address gaps in the information available

• Locate, gather, and select information for specific purposes from electronic sources

• Select a means of organizing information and ideas that is appropriate for their purpose and audience

• Use expository and persuasive styles to shape and structure language 

• Formulate relevant questions on topics of discussion

• describe and use strategies for generating and shaping ideas

This webquest should ideally be placed at the end of your Social Studies unit on Ancient Egypt.  Your students will be better equipped to work with the webquest once they have been exposed to this ancient civilization in some depth. They will also benefit from some classroom explanations of the semantics involved in the process of the webquest.  As the classroom teacher, you of course know your students best and can decide how much initial instruction they will need.  The following is a copy of the instructions the students will read when they are in the Process portion. We have provided additional instructions to enhance learning.  It could take up to a week to complete the entire webquest.

• First, students will be assigned to a "Transport" team of 5 students.  Each person in the "Transport" team will pick a role from the following list:  worker, craftsman, scribe, nobleperson, and high priest. (You may decide to group students who have varying abilities.  Stronger students will be able to help and support weaker students.  Also, you can see that Egypt's hierarchical social structure is represented by the 5 character roles. It is important that the students understand what hierarchy means.)

• Once they have picked a role they will change groups and work with their "Research" team, which consists of all the students from the other "Transport" team groupings who have chosen the same role. For example, workers together, craftsman together, etc. (Because you will want the "Research" teams to also be comprised of students with varying abilities, you may want to systematically assign the character roles so that this occurs.) 

• The "Research" teams will work together and research the role of the character they have chosen. They will consider the following questions as they conduct their research.
• What is your job? 
• What kind of dwelling do you live in? 
• What do you wear? 
• What do you eat? 
• Who is more important than you? 
• Who is less important than you? (The webquest includes a link to a page that describes to the students how to organize their research.  You may decide to model the specific graphic organizer that we present or use a similar one.)

• When their research is complete they will return to their "Transport" teams and make a presentation to the team.  In this presentation they will tell all about their character's role.  The group will be evaluating each other's presentation.  (The students will need to understand what a good presentation looks like before they can adequately peer evaluate.  The rubric in the evaluation section provides information that will help the students know how to effectively evaluate each other.  You may decide to share this rubric with them or at least brainstorm with the students what a good presentation would look like.)

• Next, the "Transport" team will conduct research on an Ancient Egyptian cultural aspect. (We suggest that you print several cultural aspects on pieces of paper, put them in a hat, and have the groups pick their 'choice' from the hat.  Some ideas to consider include Ancient Egypt's form of communication, traditional dress styles, traditional food, the hierarchical social structure, mummification, form of government, religious beliefs.)   The students' task is to decide whether the cultural aspect is something they would like to incorporate into their space station culture.  Here are some questions they should consider while making their decision.

• What are the things that make a community a nice place to live? 
• What do you want the space station to look like and why?
• What do you like about the cultural aspect and why? 
• What don't you like about the cultural aspect and why?
• Will this Ancient Egyptian culture be of benefit to your space station or not? 

(When the students are this far into the webquest, they should have an opportunity to discuss these questions in a  class format.  These questions provide a foundation upon which the students will make personal decisions regarding the building of their hypothetical space station community.  This is also an excellent opportunity to model the graphic organizer.  It is perfectly alright for some students in the group to decide 'yes' and some to decide 'no'.  The important part of the task is that they DEFEND THEIR DECISION.  You may decide that students with the same decision should work together to develop a group presentation.)
 

Now, they will put all this information into a presentation format and present their cultural aspect to the class.  They should tell the class what it is, then tell why they want it, or don't want it, to be part of their new world on the space station.  (In order for the students to pull off a top-notch presentation to the class, we suggest that you review the evaluation rubric for the presentation component with the class.  They may want to practice their presentation skills using material other than what is involved in this task.  For example, they could present something that is more familiar to them such as the rules of their favourite sport, their favourite television show, or what they did last weekend.  They should focus on refining their presentation skills during the practice sessions.  Students could help each other by offering feedback as to what they are doing well and what they need to pay more attention to.  You may want to teach them how to use index cards as prompts during their presentation.) 

Hardware requirements

• Personal computers (two computers for each group of five students)
• Internet connection

• A simple Draw program (KidPix, MS Paint, Corel Draw) where students can make a title page.
• A Graphic Organizer program (Inspiration [preferred], PowerPoint) where the students can organize their research and where they can do their brainstorming work for the final task (their decision regarding the Ancient Egyptian cultural aspect).  If your school does not have a Graphic Organizer program the students should generate one using paper and pencil.
• A Word Processor program (Microsoft Works, Microsoft Word, WordPerfect, etc.) where students can word process the final copy of their research and their final analysis.

For information about Character Roles:

www.ancientegypt.co.uk/life/story/main.html

www.ancientegypt.co.uk/writing/story/main.html

www.ancientegypt.co.uk/writing/explorestory/main.html

www.ancientegypt.co.uk/trade/home.html

www.civilization.ca/membrs/civilz/egypt/egcr07e.html

http://emuseum.mankato.msus.edu/prehistory/egypt/religion/priest.html

For information about Cultural Aspects:

www.eyelid.co.uk/hierol.htm

www.ancientegypt.co.uk/writing/home.html

www.civilization.ca/membrs/civiliz/egypt/egcw02e.html

http://rla.sd81.bc.ca/~mummification/mummification.html

www.ancientegypt.co.uk/mummies/home.html

http://members.aol.com/neferkiki/mummies.html

www.civilization.ca/membrs/civiliz/egypt/egcr06e.html

www.civilization.ca/membrs/civiliz/egypt/egcr01e.html

www.civilization.ca/membrs/civiliz/egypt/egcgov1e.html

Evaluation

For evaluation please see the rubric provided to the students within the webquest.  50% of their final mark is based on their written work, 25% is based on their presentation to their "Transport" team, and 25% is based on their class presentation.  Presentations should be evaluated by their peers and by you.  We suggest that the peer and teacher evaluation marks be averaged to produce a final presentation mark. The written work component should include the research conducted on their character role and the research and analysis of the cultural aspect. We have provided a comprehensive rubric for both components of the evaluation.

Conclusion

Most lessons teach more than just a block of content; they also implicitly teach one or more types of thinking. The goal of this webquest is to have the students analyze Ancient Egyptian cultural aspects for their cultural value.  Working through the process to accomplish this goal teaches community building as well as social responsibility.  Ideally, we want citizens to participate in their communities in a socially responsible way.  This webquest provides the teacher with several opportunities in which to engage the students in discussions about what it means to build a community and act socially responsible.  In addition, the webquest organizes students into groups of people who represent one 'step' on Ancient Egypt's social ladder.  Students become exposed to varying perspectives while working through the final analysis portion of the Webquest. This adds richness to the analysis process because the students will have to consider these various viewpoints represented within the group as they decide whether or not to adopt the Egyptian cultural aspect. 
 

Credits & References

The images used in this webquest have been imported from sites which provide free graphics. Source sites include:

• www.freefever.com/graphics
• www.clipartresource.com
• www.aplusart.com
• http://guardians.net/egypt